What is zyklon

Who are the missing million? The hidden graves of the Holocaust. Survivor art depicts Auschwitz horrors. It is clear from his notes that he expected to die in the camp - but this was his message to the outside world. A message that would have meant death for him had the SS found out. Thirty-six years later a Polish forestry student by chance unearthed the thermos, at a depth of about 40cm 16 inches , during digging at the site. Miraculously Nadjari survived Auschwitz and deportation to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria as the Third Reich collapsed.

After the war he got married and in moved to New York. He already had a one-year-old son, and in his wife Rosa gave birth to a girl, whom they named Nelli - after Marcel's beloved dead sister. In pre-war Thessaloniki he had worked as a merchant.

In New York he made a living as a tailor. Nadjari died in , aged 53 - nine years before his Auschwitz message was discovered. Such rare, direct evidence is "central" for documenting the Holocaust, Mr Polian said. He is working on a new edition of Scrolls from the Ashes, a Russian book about the Sonderkommando evidence, including Nadjari's text. Four other Sonderkommando members had left written records, the most important being that of Salmen Gradowski, a Polish Jew.

They had written mostly in Yiddish. Having been found earlier, they were in better condition. Mr Polian received a scan of Nadjari's manuscript from the Auschwitz Museum archive. After talking about its poor condition on Russian radio he was contacted by a young Russian IT expert, Alexander Nikityaev, who offered to help.

Mr Nikityaev spent a year experimenting with Adobe Photoshop's digital imaging software to restore the faded text. That was done with commercial software, but multispectral analysis - technology used by police and secret services - is even more effective.

Historians say the Nazis killed more than 1. And he pays much attention to his family. For example, he specifies who he wants to receive his dead sister's piano.

Nadjari included an introduction, in German, Polish and French, asking whoever found the manuscript to pass it on to the Greek embassy, for forwarding to his friend Dimitrios Stefanides.

In others, camp guards threw "Zyklon B" pellets down an air shaft. Zyklon B was a highly poisonous insecticide also used to kill rats and insects. Usually within minutes after entering the gas chambers, everyone inside was dead from lack of oxygen.

Under guard, prisoners were forced to haul the corpses to a nearby room, where they removed hair, gold teeth, and fillings.

The bodies were burned in ovens in the crematoria or buried in mass graves. Many people profited from the pillage of corpses. Camp guards stole some of the gold. The rest was melted down and deposited in an SS bank account. Private business firms bought and used the hair to make many products, including ship rope and mattresses. October Germans begin killing of the impaired The systematic killing begins of those Germans whom the Nazis deem "unworthy of life.

Selected patients are sent to one of six gassing installations established as part of the "Euthanasia" Program: Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein. These patients are killed in gas chambers using carbon monoxide gas. The experts who participated in the "Euthanasia" Program are later instrumental in establishing and operating the extermination camps. December 8, First killing center begins operation The Chelmno killing center begins operation.

Victims at Chelmno are killed in gas vans hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. The Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka camps use carbon monoxide gas generated by stationary engines attached to gas chambers. Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the killing centers, has four large gas chambers using Zyklon B crystalline hydrogen cyanide as the killing agent. Death by cardiac-circulatory arrest occurs usually within seconds.

Cyanide is one of the fastest-acting poisons. The Nazis produced the gas in huge quantities during World War II and it was used on its victims at Auschwitz, who were led into huge gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Gas mask-wearing SS guards would then shake the pesticide crystals and slip them into the chamber and wait for the people inside to die. Dr Anders said it was unlikely that the poison worked at the same speed in all areas given the size of the gas chamber and the unfortunate people who were breathing lower concentrations would suffer much more.

Commonly, one speaks of water in the lungs, breathing will then always be deeper and stronger because the body craves after oxygen. The agony could last more than half an hour. The gas is lighter than air… It ascends in space, width first under the ceiling. In closed rooms, you must specify height as a risk factor. This meant that taller individuals died in agony first while smaller people, and children, could see the suffering taking place over their heads. An SS doctor went in with gas mask.

All were dead.